Again, the band was playing at First Avenue, in Minneapolis this time, I went with a group of friends. The second, and final time, that I tried to see Broken Social Scene live was almost exactly three years later, when the band was on the road behind one of their short-lived Broken Social Scene presents… efforts-this time, it was Brendan Canning’s LP, Something For All of Us. I was disappointed, sure-this was in a time when I was unaware of how crippling my concert anxiety would grow-but I understood that we needed to be moving along. I feel like we probably made it through about a third of Broken Social Scene’s set, maybe a little more, when my wife started feeling ill-that’s what First Ave’ll do to you (it’s not the only time this has happened to her.) So, in the short amount of space between songs, we decided to leave. We arrived late-derailed by an afternoon trip to the Mall of America (we were so young back then, so this was still a fun place to go), and also, I had never driven in Minneapolis before, so I had no idea where we were going or how best to calmly handle “big city traffic.” A pre- Reminder Leslie Feist was opening, and we wandered in as she was finishing up. She was finishing up her final year in college, and I was coming up for the weekend to visit.Īs fate would have it, I learned that Broken Social Scene were playing at First Avenue that same weekend, so I impulsively bought tickets for the show-one of many times early in our relationship where I was like, “Hey honey, let’s go to this thing you don’t give a shit about at all.”
This was back when I was living in Dubuque, Iowa, and my wife and I were simply just courting. The first time I tried to see the band was in 2005, when they were touring in support of their self-titled release. However, it's the wordy, Feist-delivered title cut, a master class in balancing mood and melody, that delivers the album's finest moments, and the best distillation of what makes BSS so venerable.Somewhere, Broken Social Scene is still playing live. They dial it back a bit on the dreamy, Drew-led "Skyline," a lush, midnight highway-ready affair that evokes the easy, classic rock vibe of the War on Drugs, but "Vanity Pail Kids" turns the power back on with a knotty, all-hands-on-deck electro-disco party that sees all three lead vocalists representing.
Forgoing some of the elongated, atmosphere-driven instrumentals that peppered prior outings (wordless opener "Sol Luna" clocks in at just over a minute), things escalate quickly with co-openers "Halfway Home" and "Protest Song," two of the punchiest things the band has offered up in years. The shambolic, post-rock kissing cousins to fellow veteran Canadian pop army New Pornographers, Broken Social Scene's aural emissions may be less confectionary, but they're no less immediate.
Leslie Feist, Emily Haines, and Kevin Drew may serve as the group's ambassadors, but BSS are a ship requiring the whole crew to stay afloat, and Hug of Thunder is buoyant with inclusiveness and cautious hope. A dense, soul-searching blast of civic-minded indie rock/alt-pop comfort food, the 12-track set is mired in the cultural and political miasma of its time, but Broken Social Scene have always been about community - Kevin Drew has suggested in interviews that the 2015 terror attacks in Paris served as the impetus for the band's reconvening. The fifth full-length outing from the substantial Toronto collective - this iteration is 15 strong - the aptly named Hug of Thunder is the band's long-awaited follow-up to 2010's Forgiveness Rock Record.
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